Relationality, love and existential hope
Going in and through the madness together, so that something better may eventually exist beyond...
Farrkkkk!
This might seem like an odd place to start a written musing titled, ‘Relationality, love and existential hope’.
Let me explain.
In Mo Amer’s second Netflix special, filmed shortly after the ‘worst’ of the pandemic had seemingly passed, he describes this deep, embodied tension. Faaarrrrk!
Again, and again he expresses this tension. The release is woven amidst hard hitting politically attuned comedy.
The clip below highlights the astuteness of his observational powers.
I lead with this because, if you are paying attention to the world, it’s hard not to feel, well, Faarrrrkkk!
What are we doing? Seriously? This shitfuckery it utter madness.
War, planetary instability, rampant inequality, skyrocketing costs of living, disconnection, political unrest, disease… Our crises are interconnected and interdependent. Together they form what has been described as the metacrisis, polycrisis or big crisis, amongst other things.
This short video (forget the last minute or so that starts talking about some blockchain stuff. That ain’t relevant here) offers a useful and hilarious mythopetic description of this.
Instead of adding to the critical analysis on this subject, I’d like to suggest some basic framings that might add to our TL;DR understanding. From this basis I’ll suggest what I feel is a ‘useful model’ for contributing to actions that might lead us in, through and beyond the current state of affairs (if this is in fact possible).
On power and wisdom
We have the power to end things in any numbers of ways. Seriously, pick your poison. We can blow shit up. We can shut things down. We can make everyone ridiculously sick. In fact, we could just continue on our current trajectory, without doing anything special at all.
This power far outpaces our capacity to act with wisdom.
This relationship, or rather this gap, is basically a meta risk. It’s like the risk of risks.
Unless we find a way to close this gap, the Anthropocene might be the last scene of the hominid feature film.
The sacred (without religion)
Some time ago, and we can argue to what extend different narratives and ideas contributed, we separated ourselves from the rest of life. We fell out of touch with relationality. It became us versus everything else. Humans and ‘nature’. (note that many language systems have no direct equivalent. The closest being something much closer to English word for everything).
Many have argued that this paradigm shift has enabled and / or accelerated our destructive capacity, our externalisation and our loosing touch with the sacred (in this case, think less some deity and more an irreducible worth, something of or regarded with reverence, awe, or respect).
Unless we come back into right relation with the sacredness (irreducible worth) of life itself, we may again bare witness to the last scenes of the hominid feature film.
Moving in, through and beyond
Collapse isn’t inevitable, it’s an active process we are amidst today. This is a belief that many argue is empirically substantiated given comparative observations with past civilisational collapses, amongst other factors.
But, the how this occurs, and what comes beyond, is where I’d like to direct our shared focus.
Rather than a roadmap for this - something that likely can’t exist in any case as it’s not deterministic (at least not in terms of how we phenomenologically experience it. An issue for another time), subject to cultural emergence etc. - I’d like to suggest three qualities; relationality, love and existential hope.
Relationality is a way of seeing and being in the world that reflects the interconnection and interdependence of all life. Lauren Tynan’s work is worth referencing here.
Love… Well, we’ve been debating this for a while (perhaps part of the problem…?). What is it? Can we approximate it through useful models? Honestly, I don’t now. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that you know of that which I speak. You have direct experience to call upon.
Existential hope is basically the chance of something really ‘good’ happening. It’s like the inverse of existential risk. It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a ‘good chance’, just a chance.
I think of existential hopefulness as a deliberate orientation towards the chance / possibility that things can be good / better if certain actions are taken. This isn’t a sit back and see what happens thing. It’s a belief in the possibility of better to such an extent that it massively contributes to the motivational landscape supporting purposeful and directed action.
Bringing this together, it’s my belief that a relational metaphysics of some description (to put it in slightly more formal terms) will reconnect us with the absolute awe of everyday life (making us more aware so that we can consciously experience gratitude). This embodied relationality will help us fall deeply in love - over and over again - with the active process of life in relation. The way that these two qualities relate to one another will help us realise new ways of seeing, thinking, being and doing together; literally enabling us to bring about new forms of good. This ‘visibility of tangible progress’ will act as reinforcement learning (yeah, I went there) for an intersubjective existential hopefulness.
Now, I’ve covered some broad / deep stuff in far too little detail. I do not claim that this is the ‘right’ model. But I do believe it’s a useful one, and that’s all we can ask for.
So, rather than writing endlessly, let’s have a yarn. Let’s embody the relationally reference above. Let’s fall deeply in love with the collective process of wisdom seeking. Let’s reinforce the power of a collective existential hopefulness by working together in right relation.
Oh, and before signing off I’d like to paraphrase something Nora Bateson recently said in a chat with Daniel Schmachtenberger and Nate Hagens. The gist was this (in response to a question something like, “what can we do?”):
We need to laugh. We need to cook and eat together. We need to fall love. We need to make music and create art. We need to have babies…
This powerful expression of feminine energy struck the deepest cord in me. I was blown away by its clarity and beauty. It was such a different take on what we may often consider quite masculine expressions for how we might go in, through and maybe move beyond the scary AF state of affairs.
I hope it speaks to you in some way.
Oh, and here’s some stuff I found beautiful and / or meaningful lately:
Collapse and compost by Rachel Donald
It’s not about what’s right by Tim Adalin
Composing a sea of hope in a symphony of crises and complexity by Mat Mytka
So much more, but my time boxed writing session is up
With love and a generous sprinkling of existential hope.